Tag Archives: GM

What’s happened in AI: May 6th-12th

By | May 14, 2019
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Two big M&A announcements this week in the AI space. The first one is Salesforce, who acquired Bonobo AI out of Israel for an undisclosed price. Bonobo AI specializes in analyzing customer interactions for sales teams. Acquisition clearly makes sense for Salesforce.

The other big acquisition this week is Square acquiring Eloquent Labs, who provides a conversational AI assistant named “Ellie”. This acquisition should help bolster Square’s NLP capabilities. Other weekly news can be found below. 

What’s happened in AI: April 1st-7th

By | April 8, 2019
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Big news this week for Apple, who poached one of Google’s top AI minds. Dr. Ian Goodfellow decided to leave his role as “Senior Staff Research Scientist” with Google to join Apple as a “Director of Machine Learning” in the company’s Special Projects Group. Dr. Goodfellow is best known as being the “father” of GANs. Given Apple’s AR focus this hire makes a lot of sense. As for Google, in addition to losing Dr. Goodfellow, they decided to shut down their AI ethics committee after only a week. That was quick… Other weekly news can be found below.

What’s happened in AI: January 1st-6th

By | January 7, 2019
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We’ve finished up our first week in 2019 with numerous AI developments to kick things off. In the autonomous vehicle arena we witnessed perhaps the most bizarre developments as Waymo’s vehicles continue to face attacks from pedestrians. It’s quite a situation and just another reminder of how weird humans can be (let’s hope the AI doesn’t fully resemble us!). It seems like although these are random incidents, they pose a threat to public perception of the safety of autonomous vehicles.

What’s happened in AI: October 29th-November 4th

By | November 5, 2018
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Highlights this week are dominated by new developments in the autonomous vehicle world. Baidu continues to add new partners with the separate additions of Ford and Volvo this week. Waymo also had a big win this week becoming the first company to receive a permit from the California DMV that allows for fully autonomous vehicle testing without a safety driver.

What’s happened in AI: September 4th-10th

By | September 12, 2018
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There’s something about the week after Labor day. It seems like every industry starts firing on all cylinders with deals, meetings, and new developments. The AI industry is no different as we saw a plethora of fascinating developments. Highlights include Renesas’ $6.7bn purchase of IDT to expand further into autonomous vehicles, the Pentagon’s $2bn investment… Read More »

What’s happened in AI: August 19th-26th

By | August 27, 2018
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Big highlight this week is China Growth Capital’s Wayne Shiong predicting that Chinese AI companies could see their valuations decrease by 30-50%, reflecting signs of a liquidity crunch. My take is it’s too early to tell if the valuation hits will actually happen. You have to look at it on a macro / political perspective… Read More »

What’s happened in AI: June 10th-17th

By | June 18, 2018
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Another busy week in AI. In particular, I’ve noticed more news on AI’s impact on the continent of Africa. Highlights there include Google’s new AI research center in Ghana, Zimbabwe looking to expand their AI capabilities with the help of China, and a great profile of Azuri Technologies’ initiatives to bring solar energy to east… Read More »

What’s happened in AI: May 28th-June 3rd

By | June 5, 2018
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Special shout out this week to David Vandegrift and Ablorde Ashigbi of 4Degrees, who officially announced their $1mm pre-seed funding round. Very proud of the team they’ve assembled and overall progress of the company. In general, there was a ton of fundraising news in AI this week. Highlights include Sensetime’s $620mm follow on round, Softbank’s… Read More »